As college basketball fans make their picks on their brackets for the 2017 NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball tournaments, a Central College professor worked with students in his honors seminar last spring to see the impact analytics could have on brackets.

Mathematics Professor Russ Goodman tells KNIA/KRLS News the group picked two techniques for rating and ranking teams that involve matrices and linear algebra, and used a variety of statistics to make their picks “with their heads.”

Goodman says he then had participants pick brackets as they normally would–what he called the “heart” method, and the results showed a trend favoring the use of statistical analysis.

“Over half of their brackets performed in the 60th percentile or above, and we had quite a few that were 80 percent or above nationally,” Goodman says. “I still think that’s a pretty small sample set compared to all the brackets out there, but that’s an indicator to me that using some analytical methods can’t hurt.”

The first full round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament begins tomorrow, with Iowa State the lone representative for the state. The Women’s tournament starts this week as well, with ISU, Drake, and UNI all represented.